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Aduke.2049 net.math utzoo!decvax!harpo!duke!cjp Fri Apr 16 19:09:26 1982 Another debunking of the paradox of Newcombe

I agree that in many cases, particularly among research scien- tists, the importance of correlations is overrated. On the other hand, the notion of cause and effect is greatly overrated as well. If I see a coin lying on a table, how is one to describe the cause of my seeing it? It depends on the coming together of many chances: someone's having made the coin, someone's having made the table, someone's having left the coin on the table, my being alive, awake, eyes open and in focus and directed at the table, glasses on. Which of these things was the cause? Perhaps we perceive as a cause, that one aspect which we feel was least likely to happen; or, perhaps, that aspect which changed most radically or recently. Maybe someone out there can provide a ra- tional definition for "cause and effect", but I can't; the notion seems too tied up in the value judgements of humans.

Getting back to the notion of "change" as something we conceive of as a "cause": If you are truly able to "change your mind" between the time the computer tests you and the time you get to take the box(es), then the paradox is resolved by noticing that the computer **can not** be as accurate as it is claimed to be. To put it another way, if you could change from wanting to take a single box (and convincing the almighty computer of this) to wanting to take both boxes, you could do so and safely take away $1,001,000. But *if*, as is claimed, the computer *can* predict which one you take, then it is only an illusion that you changed your mind; the computer saw that you would do so.

Perhaps this thing can be clarified by assuming the *powerful* additional condition under which the computer does its great predictions: that *no outside influences* are allowed to reach you during the time between being tested and choosing. This means of course, no coin tosses; no bribes to the doorman at the money room; no angel from heaven; no new ideas engendered by looking at clouds in the sky; no light, touch, taste, smell, et cetera. You may say, "What an absurd idea"?? Of course it's ab- surd!! You'd have to be taken out of the universe altogether, without your knowing it or having it affect your thought processes, until the time you had to choose the box. But without this assumption, any one of those things *could* come along, and change your mind. The computer is claimed to be able to know your mind (almost) perfectly well, but that's not all there *is*. Your mind can be affected by *something* in the universe of which the computer has no knowledge. Therefore, the problem's premises are not satisfiable. If you attempt to accept unsatisfiable premises, you can prove that false = true. QED. Charles Poirier (duke!cjp)

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